CrowdRise

Yesterday the news broke about our most recent investment, CrowdRise. I wrote a bit about it yesterday on usv.com. I thought I’d add some thoughts here as well.

Many of our best investments came to us over time. We did not invest the first time we met them, or the second, or the third. CloudFlare was like that, SoundCloud was like that, Behance was like that. Zynga was like that. FeedBurner was like that. And CrowdRise was like that. I told the story of how I met them in 2010 and we did not invest until 2014 in the usv.com post yesterday. Many things, like wine, get better over time. And when you wait on them, these companies often turn out to be great investments.

Another thing about this investment that feels right is the domain. We have been early and consistent investors in crowdfunding at USV. We like everything about this category of company. We like the democratizing aspects of a true marketplace model. We like that it supports discovery, curation, and personal connections between funders and fundees. We like that we have become recognized domain experts and have been able to invest in some of the very best companies in this sector. It was our early expertise in this sector that led to our first meeting with CrowdRise back in 2010. If you go deep on a sector that you really like, it pays dividends, again and again.

But the thing that feels most right about CrowdRise is the impact that this company and their service has on the world. Yesterday, runners in the Boston Marathon raised over $25mm on CrowdRise. If you click on that link you can see the runners, the charities, and the teams that collectively made up that massive expression of generosity. These are not fatcats donating millions to their favorite cause (which is totally fine by me!). This is everybody giving 10s and 20s in a scale that adds up to $25mm+. This will happen again at the NYC Marathon, The Ironman Triathalon, and a many other events that will take place this year.

While events drive a lot of giving, they are not everything that happens on CrowdRise. As regular readers of AVC know, we have been raising money for CSNYC on CrowdRise. If you feel generous today and want to support expanding CS education in the NYC public schools, please head over to CrowdRise and support our cause.

Everyone on CrowdRise has a profile. Here is mine. It does not show individual gifts, but it does show the fundraisers I have run on CrowdRise. Over time, I hope and expect that these profiles will live up to Edward Norton’s vision that he shared with TechCrunch yesterday:

“‘Facebook’ is who I am as defined by my social life; ‘Linkedin,’ is who I am as defined by my [business] life; and ‘CrowdRise’ is who I am as defined by my activist life,”

If you are active on CrowdRise, I would encourage you to fill out a profile for yourself and start doing online fundraisers for your favorite causes. It’s both efficient and fun. And that’s a powerful combination.